I’ve seen protective adhesive products on the market so I decided to give one a try and the product I installed, or had installed, was Ghost Armor
Ghost Armor has an industry leading military grade adhesive designed to protect your electronic devices. The product is installed using a liquid formula to clean you phone and activate the adhesive on the back of the clear cover. Once installed, your device is dried in an air dryer chamber to ensure that everything is full adhered to your device. This process is only performed if you go to one of the many stores around the country who sell the product and provide installation service. You can simply purchase the product yourself over the Internet or at a store and perform the installation at home. I chose to have the installation done at the store expecting the final results to be better than if performed by an amateur installer. As you’ll find out, the end result did end up being good but the process to get there was less than satisfactory.
Ghost armor is available for most major phones and many other electronic devices such as Microsoft Zunes and Apple iPods and you can browse the full list on the Ghost Armor web site and also purchase your own installation kit.
I went to the Ghost Armor vendor located in Gurnee Mills Mall, Gurnee, IL and talk to one of the sales / installation people who was very helpful. I was able to see lots of demo units, have a quick demo of the protection in action and watch a very cheesy video. I handed over my money and was told my phone would be ready in about 15 to 20 minutes.
I decided to hang around and watch the installation being done and all in all it looked fairly straightforward. He removed the back from the phone and did the installation of back protection separate from the phone. This was probably a good choice and I would recommend this for anyone at home doing their own installation. He first sprayed the solution from his bottle onto the phone and gave everything a real good clean. Another quick spray and he started to apply the protective shell. With the liquid sprayed onto the phone, the shell could be fairly easily moved around after he had placed the shell approximately in position. There is also a supplied rubber wedge that is used to scrape down the shell and remove any potential bubbles from underneath. He appeared to do an excellent job as he worked around the phone removing any bubbles and molding the shell around the edges. During the steps he would dry the phone a little more in the air drying units they had at the kiosk. After a couple of minutes in the dryers he would take the phone out, press down more of the edges until the whole phone was nicely wrapped. Finally he placed in the phone in the dryers for another 5 minutes or so.
I would say that the whole process took around 30 minutes, but that was fine with me as my phone was now protected from any minimal miss-haps. He wrapped the phone in a paper towel and asked me not to use it for a further 30 minutes to ensure that everything had fully adhered.
After 30 minutes, I removed my phone from the paper towel and everything looked great apart from some hazing under the shell which is normal as they had already explained to me. You’re supposed to leave the phone for 24 hours before making your final inspection as it takes time for all the solution to fully dry and complete its process.
The following day I started checking the phone more thoroughly and although the entire product had dried, the hazing disappeared I had one edge on the face of the phone that had lifted a little. I went back to the kiosk the next day.
This where the problems arose!
I spoke to different guy at the booth and he said “Oh yeah, that’s an easy fix, give me a few minutes” Well, again I hung around and watched the doing his stuff and it was clear from the start that this guy had no clue. He was lifting edges, stretching the shell, pulling and pushing and ended up ruining the shell on the phone so started to replace the whole thing. It was a nightmare. One and a half hours later I was still there and getting pretty aggravated. Luckily the guy who installed the shell originally showed up, took over and had the whole thing finished in 5 minutes. But…. He had continued with what the first guy had already started and to cut a long story short, the following day when I checked the phone, there where bubbles and marks all over. I called the guys, spoke to obviously experienced guy who did the original install, explained the situation and he asked me to come back once more and he would fix everything. I returned the following, had the install completely re-done and the results are real nice.
I am finally very happy with the product and wanted to share this experience with the rest of the Android Community.
I do recommend the Ghost Armor product, I think it’s real nice and definitely protects my phone from most normal scratches and marks. I’m not 100% convinced that it would protect your phone as much they try to indicate but it sure does a good job. Due to the shape of the G1 and probably a lot of other devices, the corners are still exposed and can still be damaged as before.
Also, I hope you get better support than I did if you have any issues. I sent a complaint using the Contact Us on the suppliers web site after the second install when I was really aggravated and have yet to receive any response.
Here are a few more shots of the final product installed.
